1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains in general to data storage, and in particular to systems and methods of error correction for data stored on optical or other disk storage media.
2. Description of the Related Art
As increasing numbers of users make computers part of their everyday business and personal activities, the amount of data stored on computers has increased exponentially. Computer systems store vast music and video libraries, precious digital photographs, valuable business contacts, critical financial databases, and hoards of documents and other data. Common storage means include optical or other disk storage media.
Unfortunately, since the advent of computers, there has been an ever-present risk of losing data that is stored on computer-readable media. Because the consequences of such losses can be dire, methods of decreasing the likelihood of unrecoverable errors have been developed. For example, Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) techniques have been developed to offer a higher level of protection (fault tolerance) from data loss that can occur from malfunctions of a disk. RAID techniques, including RAID levels 0 through 5, use multiple disks to form one logical storage unit. Despite the implementation of RAID techniques, there remains very high unrecoverable error rates in reading storage media, which are particularly problematic outside of the entertainment content delivery context.
What are needed are methods and systems for recovering data from disks that have suffered mechanical damage from common causes of errors, such as a fingerprint or scratch.